


In A Word

by on_my_toes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 08:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6559102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm taking one-shots based on single word prompts now, to be updated as chapters on this story. The first: </p><p>“I thought you were dead.” </p><p>Rey flinches. His words sear into a part of her she has ignored for so long that it is almost too much to feel all at once. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice thin and papery against the wind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Word

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I'm taking Reylo prompts based on single words at heyloreylo on Tumblr. I'll be posting them here on a chapter by chapter basis, although there won't be an overarching story — all of these are one-shots. Some of these will be canon-era, others will be AUs, depending on where my brain is at that particular moment. PARTY ON! 
> 
> (As always, also taking Modern AU prompts, to be updated elsewhere!)

**Trust**

 

“I thought you were  _ dead _ .” 

 

Rey flinches. His words sear into a part of her she has ignored for so long that it is almost too much to feel all at once. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice thin and papery against the wind. 

 

Ren looks at her as if she has struck him. His eyes are wild, bloodshot, fixated on her but somehow giving the impression that he is looking everywhere around them, all at once. He is buzzing, electric, dangerous. She has never seen him more angry in the three years she has known him. She should be afraid. 

 

“You’re  _ sorry _ ,” he mutters, the last word savage on his tongue. “You’re  _ sorry? _ ” 

 

His voice has risen into a scream. Only a month has passed since she saw him last, but he is so changed that she almost doesn’t recognize him. For so long she has been sucked into his pain, into his guilt, into his agony, but never has she felt it projected in such full force. She had expected, of course, that the news of her death would affect him; she could never have understood how profoundly until he is standing here in front of her, looking torn between taking her into his arms and gutting her. 

 

“I did what I had to do,” she says, surprised at the quaver in her voice, at the creeping doubt in her heart. “Snoke had to believe I was dead if we were going to — ”

 

“ _ Snoke _ had to know,” he says, turning his back to her. He takes a few paces away, but she knows from experience he is far from finished with her. “You didn’t have to let  _ me _ think you were — ”

 

“You know we did,” she argues. 

 

He rounds on her then, wild but somehow more frighteningly human than he has ever been. He comes so close to her that she cannot suppress the tiny gasp that escapes her, cannot smother the awareness of just how alone the two of them are right now. She can feel the heat of his anger pulsing in her own blood. 

 

“I  _ trusted _ you,” he says. “Of all the people — out of everyone — you were the only person I ever trusted to tell me the  _ truth _ .” 

 

The words sting, even if she doesn’t let it show. She stares back at him, defiant, unyielding. Snoke is dead. Kylo Ren is free. And most importantly, countless lives have been spared by the General’s tricky maneuvering and careful plots — Rey’s fake death was one of the fundamental, essential assurances of her success. She will not apologize for her actions a second time. She knows that Ren will come to appreciate them soon enough. 

 

But if it is truth he is after, she will give only as much of it as she is willing. “I didn’t want to do it,” she says. And the unspoken:  _ I didn’t think that you’d care _ . 

 

“How?” he demands, and she can tell by the inflection that she has let her guard down, that he is skimming the surface of her thoughts as easily as he breathes. “How could you think that?” 

 

She steels himself before he can probe again. Before he sees her weakness. The nights she spent curled into a ball, too dehydrated to cry tears; when she was 14 and a wound she got scavenging was so severely infected she laid hallucinating in her AT-AT for almost a solid week; the marks and marks and marks on the walls of her home, screaming at her in the dark, every day a throbbing reminder that  _ nobody was coming, nobody cared _ . 

 

It doesn’t matter, of course. He already knows. 

 

“I don’t want to care,” he says bitterly, unexpectedly. “I wish I didn’t.” 

 

The back of her eyes are burning. She focuses them on the ground.  “Me, too.” 

 

Then one of his massive hands is at the back of her neck, his arm pulling her in with such force that it nearly knocks the wind out of her. She gasps up at him, but doesn’t protest. He has had too many opportunities to kill her to take one now. 

 

“I hope it was worth it,” he growls into her face. 

 

In this proximity, it is almost unbearable. He opens his mind to her for the barest of moments, and she feels it — the disbelief, the pain, the grief that he has felt ever since the general laid the trap, ever since they effectively snuffed out Rey’s Force signature like a dark curtain over a the stars. She doesn’t want to feel it, doesn’t want to acknowledge that it’s her fault. 

 

But all the same, she would never take it back. 

 

Her voice is hollow, but steady. She wonders as she says them if she is now touching him for the very last time. 

 

“It was.” 


End file.
